


To Rebuild Family

by HomuraBakura



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Trustshipping - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 20:20:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7283296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HomuraBakura/pseuds/HomuraBakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>30 min oneshot.</p><p>Ishizu asks Seto who that was just now.  Seto tries to decide if he will try to rekindle a connection with his cousin, the son of the man who abandoned him and Mokuba.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Rebuild Family

“So who was that?”

His shoulders jumped in spite of himself, heart skipping a beat. She hesitated for just a breath, brows drawing together.

“Forgive me,” Ishizu said, in that quiet murmur of hers, taking one of her arms by the elbow in front of her. “I didn't mean to sneak up on you.”

Seto shook his head. It wasn't her fault—moving quietly seemed to be unconscious for her. He just hadn't noticed she was standing there, and it irked him. He was supposed to be more alert than this. And yet, a huge marble hallway of mostly emptiness, save for a scattering of old relics shoved into glass boxes, and he hadn't even heard a click of her heels on the floor, or the swish of her long dress. He was mostly just irritated at himself for not paying that much attention. Maybe he was more worked up than he had thought.

He swore mentally as his hand twitched up to the back of his neck, eyes flickering down the hallway in the opposite direction from her, where his previous conversation partner had just disappeared. His lip curled just thinking about it.

“He seems to have had a bad effect on you,” Ishizu said, tilting her head slightly in that way she did when she was soul-searching him. “Are you all right?”

Seto shrugged.

“Conversations with him just—never cease to upset me,” he said, grimacing. “That was my cousin.”

She blinked, lips drawing apart. Her deep eyes flickered towards the museum's door, which was still swinging slowly shut. Her eyes slid back to Seto and half closed, as though she were trying to gauge the resemblance.

“Your...cousin?” she said.

He nodded.

“...biological, or...?”

“Gozaburo was an only child,” Seto said by way of answer. “So was his wife.”

Ishizu's whole face seemed to clear, and then her brows crinkled with what appeared to be concern.

“Seto...?”

She stepped forward, her dress rippling around her feet like clouds. Her hand hesitated for just a moment over his arm before she dropped it tentatively onto the back of his hand. He didn't move to take her hand, but he didn't move away either. He closed his eyes, just trying to focus on the contact between their skin—her hands were...so soft. It was like touching velvet.

“Are you all right?” she said, in that calm voice of hers, unprying, unexpectant. She didn't expect an answer, and he knew that if he said he didn't want to talk about it, he knew she would back away. He knew that he would only have to say a word and she would back off without another question, and it would never come up again. He almost wanted that for a moment. Shove another unpleasant memory under the rug.

He let his eyes open, and meet with hers. Her face was like the sky, he thought. Open, unassuming, and...comforting. For a moment, he saw his cousin's face at the back of his head, that awkward half smile and the way his eyes flickered to the ground, his hand constantly jumping to the back of his neck. Talking was hard for him, too. This connection wasn't...easy for either of them.

“His name is Miyamoto Akira,” Seto said, eyes shifting over to one of the ancient Egyptian relics across the hall. “His father, Hinata—they took us in, Mokuba and I, but....only for a few weeks. Then they dropped us off at the orphanage after taking what little inheritance we had left.”

Ishizu's hand curled around his hand. He still couldn't bring himself to turn his hand around to grip hers.

“I think he hated her—my mother,” Seto muttered. “Hinata was angry with her...for marrying someone that her family hadn't approved. It was...some kind of twisted punishment, or something.”

Ishizu's eyes held no pity when he looked towards her again—only a deep, unabiding sadness. The kind of sadness one holds for a world that is unnecessarily cruel.

“And...your cousin?”

Seto's gaze dropped to the floor, and he traced the smoky lines of marble under his feet with his eyes.

“I don't remember him very well,” he said. “He was two years younger than me. All I remember was seeing him crying in the window as the car drove away from the window.”

“And he sought you out?”

It had been one of the strangest days of his life. The young man standing awkwardly in the front lobby, stumbling over his words to the receptionist behind the desk.

“ _I'm sorry, I know this is—kind of weird and you won't believe me, but if I could just talk to him for a second, I just need to tell him something—”_

He was almost the spitting image of his father, the same aristocratic cheekbones and carved chin, the same wide forehead. His hair was cut in a shaggy, messy style in the same color of his mother's auburn rather than his father's black, a style that Seto knew Miyamoto Hinata would have never approved of—too chunky and uneven in its cut.

Seto hadn't even been supposed to be in the lobby at that moment, but Yugi had stopped by to drop off an order of cards from the Kame Game Shop that Seto wanted to test with his new Duel Disk system, and he had been checking that everything was there himself. Last time, someone had missed an entire package; it was better to do this trade off with Yugi himself.

A series of coincidences that had led him into standing in the same room as his long-lost biological cousin. He hadn't been able to stop himself from staring.

Akira looked up at him. The same chestnut colored eyes as Hinata, eyes that had haunted Seto for years, glaring down at him impassively as Mokuba clung to Seto's hand, both of them standing in front of the orphanage with nothing but tiny bags hanging from their shoulders. For a moment, Seto flinched.

But then Akira's lips had parted, Seto had seen tears glaze his eyes for a moment. He stepped back from the desk, and then, only then, Seto had seen the tiny girl at his side, clutching his hand and sucking on her other thumb.

“ _I—I'm so sorry about this, but I...well, I'd—I'd been looking everywhere to see what happened to you, all of the records—my father deleted all of them so I couldn't find you—”_

“ _Why were you even looking?”_

Akira's eyes had held nothing of his father's poison or ice. They were the warmth of treebark instead, of browned baked goods.

“ _I needed to make sure—that you were okay. And to...say I'm sorry for what we did.”_

Seto found Ishizu's eyes in the present, looking up from the marble.

“He means well,” Seto mumbled. “I...I know he does.”

“But?” Ishizu prompted.

Seto sucked in a breath.

“It just...the bad memories. He....brings them back. Feelings of being abandoned.”

Ishizu's other hand came up against the other side of his, holding his hand in both of hers.

“Family is a strange thing,” she whispered.

He had to laugh at that, a tight sound, more like a cough.

“And you'd know all about that,” he said, shaking his head.

She smiled, pulling his hand up between hers and pressing her lips briefly to the backs of his fingers. He finally found the strength in his hands to curl his hand around hers, to grip her warmth against his cold.

“Will you meet him again?” Ishizu asked.

Seto glanced over his shoulder at the glass doors Akira had disappeared through. Then he looked back to Ishizu. The woman stood so quietly before him, so tall and strong. A woman who had watched her brothers leave her behind, and then welcomed them back without even a word against them, taken them into her arms in an embrace. Rebuilt her family.

Akira had only been a child—he hadn't even wanted to leave them behind.

Seto closed his eyes and tightened his grip on her. She seemed to understand exactly what was needed, because he felt her step closer, felt her forehead press against his. He breathed in and caught the faint scent of pomegranates from her shampoo.

“Yes,” he said, and he was only briefly surprised. “I...I think I will. Mokuba hasn't met him yet—he doesn't know he's...tried making contact again.”

He could almost hear Ishizu smile.

“I'm glad,” she said.

It was all she had to say. And it was all he needed, right now. Her warmth was everything that he needed.

He had to laugh softly.

Could he have ever imagined this, as a teenager? His cousin back searching for forgiveness, to rebuild a family. And a woman that he loved, her warmth wrapped around him.

This family of his...it was just going to keep growing, in the end. And he found himself....excited.

 


End file.
